Much of the progress in making computers and microelectronic devices faster, smaller and less expensive involves integration, squeezing ever more transistors and other electronic structures onto a postage stamp sized piece of silicon. A postage stamp sized piece of silicon may contain tens of millions of transistors, each transistor as small as a few hundred nanometers. However, silicon based devices are approaching their fundamental physical size limits.
In addition, inorganic solid state devices are generally encumbered with a complex architecture which leads to a high cost and a loss of data storage density. The circuitry of volatile semiconductor memories based on inorganic semiconductor material must constantly be supplied with electric current with a resulting heating and high electric power consumption in order to maintain stored information. Nonvolatile semiconductor devices based on inorganic semiconductor material have a reduced data rate and relatively high power consumption and large degree of complexity.
Organic semiconducting materials, such as organic polymers, are increasingly examined as cost effective replacements for inorganic semiconducting materials in microelectronic devices. However, one of the concerns with the use of semiconducting polymers relates to the sub-optimal mobility of carrier ions/charges injected into the semiconducting polymer layer.